 "Photo: Mitch Ramos / UCD Advocate")
Undergrad Sarah Schoonmaker was struggling to find an audience for her research—until now. On Monday, Nov. 16, Schoonmaker will present her studies with others at the Student Research Conference in Tivoli room 320.
Dan Auerbach, a graduate student in the sociology department, had students like Schoonmaker in mind when he came up with the idea for a student conference on campus. He was brainstorming with other graduate students in the department, and that discussion inspired fellow student Charlene Shelton to start organizing the conference the following day.
“Both Dan and I have presented at professional sociology conferences, but the last time we went, we were the only students from our department,” Shelton said.
She said that they both noticed that conferences are expensive to attend as a student, especially when they are out of state, and that some disciplines don’t offer enough conferences, or make them easily accessible for students who’d like to present their research.
“We decided that we should provide an opportunity at the university for students to present their work in a conference-like atmosphere, so that students who couldn’t go to conferences could have that experience,” Shelton said.
She also said that a student-led research conference allows students to present their research in a safe setting and might encourage them to go to more conferences in the future.
Shelton said students can be intimidated at professional conventions, “because you don’t know what you’re getting into if you haven’t been to one before.”
The conference, called “Inquiring Minds Want to Know,” will take place Nov. 16, from 8:30 a.m. to noon. In traditional conference format, the event will have about 30 students presenting their research in 15-minute segments.
There will be a mixture of UC Denver undergraduate and graduate students from disciplines such as mathematics, anthropology, philosophy, and everything in between.
Schoonmaker, who is pursuing her undergraduate degree in philosophy, has been conducting research on her own in the field of philosophy of science.
At the conference, she will be presenting her analysis of the current debate between intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.
She said that she is excited to get feedback from her fellow students, and that she hopes to submit her research writing in her application to graduate school.
Fellow philosophy major Curtis Metcalfe also said he hopes that the conference experience will be helpful for his graduate applications.
He said he knows that attending conferences is part of being a philosopher. “It’s just a really great opportunity to get some experience doing that before I actually go to grad school,” he said. Metcalfe has tailored a part of his senior honors thesis research for the conference.
“If students aren’t familiar with the way that academic research journals and research conferences work, it would definitely benefit [them to] see what kinds of ideas count as research, and what it looks like to present research,” Metcalfe said.
The conference is free for all students to attend, though registration is encouraged via the sociology department Web site.
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